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Directed by Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth) from a screenplay by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor (Game of Thrones, Everwood), The Shape of Water is, like so many of del Toro's films, in a category of its own. On the surface it's science fiction, but it's also a romance, a spy thriller and a character study. It helps if you're familiar with sci-fi films of the 1950's and early 60's, most particularly the 1954 classic film The Creature from the Black Lagoon. But this is The Creature from the Black Lagoon retold as a fantastically improbable love story, reminiscent in many ways of Spielberg's E.T.

Set in the early 1960's, The Shape of Water begins at the secretive Occam Aerospace Research Center in Baltimore where Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) works as part of the janitorial staff. Elisa is mute, the result of an injury sustained as an infant, but can hear just fine. She communicates by using American Sign Language, relying on her friend and fellow janitor Zelda (Octavia Spencer) to interpret for her to everyone else. Elisa lives in an apartment above a movie theater. Her neighbor and friend in the adjoining apartment is Giles, is a talented but struggling middle aged artist who is also closeted and gay.

One day OARC the receives delivery of a strange creature in a water tank, captured by Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) from a remote river in South America where the natives apparently worshipped it as some kind of river god. Strickland coldly refers to the creature as "the Asset" and "an affront" to God and nature. But Elisa sees the creature (Doug Jones) in very different ways, first with curiosity, then, as time goes on, with increasing empathy.

Theater review. Possible spoilers. While watching this film in a sparsely populated multiplex theater, a few people began to walk out midway through the movie. I’ve seen this before and I always find myself guessing why. I mean what were they expecting? My guess with this film is that it is a tale of fantasy. One involving romance with a humanoid-like creature but clearly not human. I’m sure everyone knows of the numerous iterations of “Beauty and the Beast” but don’t get upset. Maybe the difference is that this film is pretty graphic, not only with the brutality of beast’s captivity but of the bold sexual context.

Guillermo del Toro’s beast this time is a South American river creature considered a god by the local population. The creature is played by Doug Jones and resembles another character created by del Toro and played by Jones in “Hellboy II.” He has a dual lung composition which allows him to spend time out of water, but he prefers being in it. The web-handed (and footed) creature was captured by Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon in another great performance), an instrument of the U. S. government. It’s 1962 and the military believes there may be some benefit to studying the creature and its potential powers.

The large facility where the creature is kept includes a cleaning crew. One of the cleaning ladies is Elisa Esposito (an Oscar-worthy performance by Sally Hawkins) who can hear but cannot speak due to some mysterious mishap many years earlier. Her best friend and fellow cleaner is Zelda Fuller (Octavia Spencer) provides plenty of dialog to offset Elisa’s mute. Elisa, while not speaking still communicates fully using facial gestures and her own form of sign language. Michael Stuhlbarg plays Dr. Hoffstetler, the primary scientist responsible for studying the creature.

Sides are quickly set as Strickland who is a bully, a thug and a sexual predator throws his weight around using a cattle prod as his reinforcement. Hoffstetler, like most movie scientists is more interested in studying the creature not torturing him. He has other secrets that will come into play later. Elisa lives over a movie theater and her friend and neighbor is a gay man named Giles (Richard Jenkins) who like Elisa is love-starved and struggles to make ends meet as an artist for an advertising firm.

Elisa is curious more than anything about the captive creature and slowly begins to approach him when he’s in his water tank, constrained around the neck. The fact that the two beings must communicate non-verbally makes it all seem to make sense. The creature, while not handsome by human sensibilities, has a certain character doesn’t make him repulsive. Over time, the two become close. When it becomes clear the creature will be killed and dissected, Elisa and her friends chart a plan to free him.

Screenwriting chores are from del Toro and Vanessa Taylor. Del Toro has admitted he based the story on his love of the movie “Creature from the Black Lagoon” which he first saw as a 6-year old. It’s one of my favorite movies too. Certainly the resemblance between the creatures in the films differ primarily from the advanced costume designs of today. I was a bit puzzled by the amount of time Elisa had to keep the creature under wraps before freeing him back into the water. Under the circumstances it seemed odd, not to mention dangerous. Still, I guess it allows time for the unusual heightening of the romantic angle. There is another scene in the film which might make some people slap their forehead in bewilderment, but like the whole movie, just go with it. After all it’s a fairy tale for grown-ups and a sensitive one at that. While del Toro’s imagination is primarily responsible for it all, it is Hawkins who makes it work. Recommended…for most people.

Elisa Esposito goes through the same routine every day, sleeping during the day and working at night at the Occam Aerospace Research Center in Baltimore as a cleaning lady. She is mute due to scars around her neck from infancy and communicates with sign language. When the facility brings in an "asset" that turns out to be an amphibious man, Elisa is immediately fascinated. The creature is kept in shackles, cut, electrocuted, suffocated, and all other manner of torture inflicted by the military, spearheaded by Colonel Richard Strickland. Elisa spends as much time as she can with the amphibious man, introducing him to music, feeding him hardboiled eggs, and teaching him sign language. When the military decides to terminate "the asset," Elisa gets her few friends to attempt to free the man she fell in love with.

Guillermo del Toro's vision is always exciting, fresh, and steeped in horror. The Shape of Water is another fairy tale film for adults that deals with love in unexpected places, outcasts, and the toxic nature of the patriarchy. Elisa is a generally cheerful person who goes through her daily life with few friends and simple pleasures. As a cleaning lady, she can't afford lavish things, but manages to make the things within her means special. Most of the people in her life dismiss her out of hand due to her mute nature, but her true friends, who are her neighbor Giles and her co-worker Zelda, treat her as they would anyone else. Giles is a struggling artist and closeted gay man in an era where coming out would mean losing everything. Zelda is a no-nonsense African American woman in a time of segregation and overt racism. Elisa finds kinship and respect with both of her friends despite how the world treats them and they find the same in her.

The amphibious man is essentially the Creature from the Black Lagoon. He was taken from a river in South America where he was worshipped as a god. In the US, the military abuses and tortures him. They only find value in a dissection of the creature to find out how it works even though he may be the only one of his kind. The Russians, on the other hand, care more about destroying the creature to keep the knowledge from the Americans. The amphibious man has intelligence and the ability to learn along with animalistic instincts and behaviors. He is in between human and animal with traits of both. His relationship with Elisa starts off as friendship and progresses to attraction and love. Their relationship will never be a conventional one, but they make each other happy and that's all that really matters. Elisa and her friends, along with a Russian double agent who values the man over his country, break the amphibious man out of the lab in a half baked, pulse pounding heist. His life at Elisa's home has some hiccups, but is generally beneficial until his health starts to decline.

The villain of this piece is Colonel Richard Streckland, a man completely confident in himself. He treats those he views under him like garbage shown when he unabashedly pisses on the floor in front of Elisa and Zelda who just cleaned. Racism and sexism color his point of view and he tosses out comments no matter who is present. The patriarchal society has told him his whole life that he is worthy, special, and above everyone else. The scene at the car dealership encompasses this when the salesman feeds him a line about being a man of the future. Streckland falls for it and buys the car because it's in line with what he's been fed his whole life. When he loses the "asset" to what he thinks is a sophisticated Black Ops team, his whole career, all that he's worked for his whole life, could be destroyed. The creature bit off his fingers early in the film and those slowly necrotizing digits symbolize his fall and his self perceived value influenced by the patriarchy. He rips off those fingers in a fit of rage, showing that he will find the creature and destroy it even if it means destroying himself as well. Streckland could have easily been a one dimensional villain, but his motivation and reasoning give him dimension.

The Shape of Water is an absolutely beautiful film with love and friendship right alongside violence and cruelty. Fantasy exists with harsh reality and social issues that are still relevant today. Every performance is exceptional, especially Richard Jenkins as Giles and Michael Shannon as Colonel Streckland. The pacing is a little unexpected, but perfect in retrospect. The mystery of the creature isn't dwelled upon because we all know what it is. More time is dedicated to getting to know all the characters, building up their relationship, and moving the plot along. Guillermo del Toro made a wonderful movie with a bizarre premise and makes it a touching, emotional work of art.